'Living-wage' movement growing in region

Housekeeper Maria Bautista of Santa Ana is a beneficiary of Measure N which passed last November. Her minimum wage salary is now $13.00 per hour. The living wage movement is taking off around the country, with more than 140 jurisdictions passing ordinances or ballot measures to force governments and companies to pay their workers enough money to enable them to rise out of poverty. CHRISTINE COTTER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Living wage elsewhere in state

Long Beach

$13 an hour. Cost-of-living raises. Paid sick days. Workers entitled to 100 percent of tips. Applies to hotels with more than 100 rooms

$11.65 per hour if health benefits provided; $13.99 without health benefits. Cost of living raises. Paid sick days. Applies to certain contractors and subcontractors with 12 or more workers performing at least $25,000 in services.

Source: city and county governments

If anyone has a reason to celebrate Labor Day, the 119-year old holiday that marks the economic progress of American workers, it would be Maria Bautista.

In the cramped kitchen of her Santa Ana apartment, Bautista, a 58-year-old widow, holds out two pay stubs. One, dated last year, reveals a weekly take-home pay of $345. The other, dated last month, shows a happier number: $454.

It may not be much in exchange for cleaning 18 rooms a day at a Long Beach Marriott – hoisting heavy mattresses, pushing vacuum cleaners, scrubbing toilets for strangers.

But due to a November ballot initiative that raised the hourly wage of some 2,000 Long Beach hotel workers to $13 an hour, Bautista can breathe a bit easier.

There are fewer evenings when she sits, face buried in her hands, worrying about which bill she can afford to pay after food and gas – her rent, her car or the interest on a $1,500 loan she took out to visit her dying grandfather in Mexico. The new law, she says, is “una bendición.” A blessing.

Across the United States, more than 125 cities and counties have enacted ordinances or passed ballot initiatives to lift the wages of the working poor. The first of the municipal measures, which are known as “living wage” laws, passed in Baltimore in 1994. Los Angeles approved a law in 1997, covering city contractors and, in 2007, extended it to private hotels around Los Angeles International Airport.

In the past five years, as federal and state minimum wage levels failed to keep pace with the cost of living, and as the recession took its toll, the living wage movement has accelerated. The boldest measures, such as one in San Francisco and another passed by San Jose voters in November, cover all workers, public and private.

In recent demonstrations, fast food workers around the country, many of whom make the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour or slightly more, have demanded wages of $15 an hour.

So far, Irvine is the only Orange County jurisdiction with a living wage ordinance. The city first passed a measure covering its municipal workers, and, in 2007, extended it to contractors with at least $100,000 a year in city business. After annual adjustments, Irvine now sets minimum pay at $10.81 an hour plus health insurance, or $13.23 without health insurance.

The law features an unusual twist. The 101 contractors covered must pay all their workers at least the Irvine rate, even those who work in other cities. Engineering or consulting firms already may offer their employees more. But for landscaping, security and janitorial companies, the rate represents a hefty notch above the state minimum wage of $8 an hour.

“This is not radical,” said Councilman Larry Agran, the measure's sponsor. “Irvine is America's leading planned city. Why should anyone working for us be paid a sub-poverty wage? It used to be an American value to treat workers well.” Only in the last 20 years, he added, has exploiting workers “become a national fetish while people at the top make out like bandits.”

Irvine Mayor Steven Choi, who opposed the measure when it passed six years ago, however, contends the living wage “hikes up our government's expenses, which are paid by citizens' taxes. Capitalism is based on free competition. Private companies should be able to set their own level of pay, depending on the work. They may want to pay minimum wage for entry-level workers.”

Opponents offer similar arguments against Measure N, Long Beach's living wage. Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Randy Gordon calls it “a backdoor ploy to unionize hotels,” noting that the measure was funded by the Unite Here union, which has waged a long fight to organize Hyatt and Hilton employees across the country.

“This is government telling business what to do,” he said. “It forces hotels to pay $13 an hour, and raise wages by 2 percent every year, when maybe they can't afford it.”

Managers of several Long Beach hotels declined to return calls. “They have a gag order from corporate headquarters not to talk to the media,” said Gordon, who has acted as a spokesman. At least one of the 17 hotels covered by the measure, the Hotel Current, has shut rooms so it could fall beneath the ordinance's 100-room threshold, he added.

Housekeeper Maria Bautista of Santa Ana is a beneficiary of Measure N which passed last November. Her minimum wage salary is now $13.00 per hour. The living wage movement is taking off around the country, with more than 140 jurisdictions passing ordinances or ballot measures to force governments and companies to pay their workers enough money to enable them to rise out of poverty. CHRISTINE COTTER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Donald Blackwood, bellman at the Hilton Long Beach, outside the Long Beach Convention Center on August 26, 2013. Blackwood benefited from Measure N, a living wage ballot measure that he said gave him a $5 an hour raise. Long Beach voters passed Measure N, a ballot initiative, in November, guaranteeing workers at the city's biggest hotels a minimum of $13 an hour. Supporters argued the city should require hotels to raise its workers wages because the hotels benefited from $114 million in direct subsidies, as well as city funding of $169 million to renovate the Long Beach convention center and millions more for other downtown projects that supply business to the hotels JEFF GRITCHEN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The Westin Hotel across the street from the Long Beach Performing Arts Center and public water fountains in Downtown Long Beach, Calif., on August 26, 2013. Long Beach voters passed Measure N, a ballot initiative, in November, guaranteeing workers at the city's biggest hotels a minimum of $13 an hour. Supporters argued the city should require hotels to raise its workers wages because the hotels benefited from $114 million in direct subsidies, as well as city funding of $169 million to renovate the Long Beach convention center and millions more for other downtown projects that supply business to the hotels JEFF GRITCHEN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The Hyatt Hotel is bordered by Rainbow Lagoon in Downtown Long Beach, Calif., on August 26, 2013. Long Beach voters passed Measure N, a ballot initiative, in November, guaranteeing workers at the city's biggest hotels a minimum of $13 an hour. JEFF GRITCHEN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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